I enjoyed the sequel to The Finder even more than the first book. Initially, I thought Fergus had another unwilling partner in Zacker, a NY cop who attacks Fergus when he returns to Scotland to make amends for deserting his family as a teenager. In typical Fergus fashion, he’s at the wrong place at the wrong time and is mistaken for a murderous art thief.
In The Finder, Fergus took a job on the other side of the galaxy to find and retrieve an almost sentient spaceship named Venetia’s Sword for the Shipyard. In Driving, we discover the Shipyard builders, six eccentric and brilliant engineers, are more friends and family than employers.
While he’s being beaten by the obsessed cop, the Shipyard’s AI contacts him. They’re being attacked. When he arrives, with the cop in tow, they discover his friends missing and the Shipyard’s reactor critical.
On a nearby moon, they find one of his friends (in stealth mode), but she has no clue why their friends were taken. They save the Shipyard (mostly) and use the Sword to follow clues to Titan where the survivor and Zacker are arrested for killing the others. Authorities found six bodies.
Following a slim lead, Fergus goes undercover as a hauler driver on Enceladus, an ice-locked ocean moon inhabited by various research scientists. One of the installations is top secret, and Fergus hopes his friends are there. Other scientists, also AI experts, are missing. Fergus strives to prove his friends are alive and reachable after a captured scientist escapes to his hauler.
Fergus infuriates some of his fellow haulers (one in particular) and is befriended by others. He adopts an abandoned cat. He’s beaten, tries to control his electrical super-powers (given to him by aliens in the first book), and solves the art theft. His main goal remains rescuing his friends.
To top it all off, he discovers what the mercenaries were really trying to build—a war drone using captured alien AI technology. When does AI stop being artificial?
Less people being mean to Fergus for no reason this time around, and I appreciated that. No sidekick for him this time either. I expected Zacker to fill that role, but he had his own adventures on Titan.
So glad there’s a third Fergus book coming out in September. Thanks, Ms. Palmer.
